Now they'll go head to head.

Both advanced to Friday's semifinals with victories in straight sets, finishing less than 10 minutes apart. Nadal drubbed Stanislas Wawrinka 6-2, 6-3, 6-1, and shortly thereafter Djokovic eliminated 35-year-old Tommy Haas 6-3, 7-6 (5), 7-5.

So much for the preliminaries to set up a much-anticipated rematch of last year's final, which Nadal won for a record seventh French Open title. He's 57-1 at Roland Garros and bidding to become first man to win eight titles at the same Grand Slam event.

"I'm ready to play five sets," Djokovic said.

The Serb, ranked No. 1 and the winner of six Grand Slam titles, seeks the only major championship he has yet to win. With two more victories he would become the eighth man to complete a career Grand Slam.

"I would prefer an easier opponent," Nadal said. "But it's Novak, and I have to accept that it's going to be a very tough match."

The other semifinal pits Spaniard David Ferrer against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who's trying to become the first Frenchman in 30 years to win Roland Garros.

Advancing on the women's side were defending champion Maria Sharapova and two-time Australian Open winner Victoria Azarenka, and they'll meet Thursday. The other semifinal will match No. 1 Serena Williams against 2012 runner-up Sara Errani.

Nadal leads Djokovic 19-15 but lost their most recent meeting in the Monte Carlo final on clay in April. Nadal leads 6-3 in Grand Slam meetings.

"I played a great match when I faced him on clay this year at Monte Carlo," Djokovic said. "That match gave me a bit of confidence against him. But here in Roland Garros, he's very good. He has lost only once in the past 10 years. It will be very difficult for me. But I'm in a very good position now."

Because Nadal's ranking slipped during a seven-month layoff because of a knee injury, he and Djokovic wound up in the same half of the draw. As a result, they'll meet before the final at a major event for the first time since 2008.

Both were near top form in the quarterfinals.

Djokovic reached his 12th consecutive Grand Slam semifinal and improved to 33-4 this year by wearing down Haas, the oldest French Open men's quarterfinalist since 1971. Djokovic built an early lead, winning 40 of his first 43 service points.

Haas found himself on the verge of pulling even at 5-all in the tiebreaker, but Djokovic smacked a backhand winner to end a 24-stroke rally longest of the match and won the next point as well for a two-set lead.

He wobbled at the finish, but Haas was too tired to put up much of a fight. Djokovic kissed the line with a backhand winner on match point, and after the handshake ritual at the net, let out a scream and threw a punch, ready for Rafa.

Nadal, seeded No. 3, turned in his finest performance of the tournament yet. After dropping the first set in each of the first two rounds, he has won 12 sets in a row.

"I had a difficult first week," he said. "The last two matches were much more positive. I played today at a very good level."

Nadal improved to 10-0 against Wawrinka and has won all 22 sets they've played.

Sharapova needed a comeback unlike any other in her career to reach the semifinals, rallying past Jelena Jankovic, 0-6, 6-4, 6-3. It was Sharapova's first win after losing an opening set 6-0.

The No. 2-seeded Sharapova earned her first French Open title a year ago to complete a career Grand Slam. She has won 12 matches in a row at Roland Garros, where her 42-9 record is the best among active women.

"Obviously it only gets tougher from here," Sharapova said, "but I'm really happy I'm at this stage again."

She's 5-7 against No. 3 Azarenka, who reached her first Roland Garros semifinal by beating Maria Kirilenko 7-6 (3), 6-2.

The warmest weather of the tournament greeted the last of the quarterfinalists, and Jankovic quickly had Sharapova sweating. In the first set the Russian repeatedly missed the lines by narrow margins or clipped the net cord, and the match was 35 minutes old before she won a game and only then because Jankovic double-faulted on break point.

Jankovic won 27 points in the first set, 20 on unforced errors by her opponent.

"I still felt like I was in the match," Sharapova said. "And I was."

She then began to find her range while hitting even harder than before, while Jankovic did her best to withstand the barrage. In contrast to Sharapova's metronomic shrieking, Jankovic went about her business in silence until she started muttering to herself as her lead disappeared.

"It was a big fight," Jankovic said. "It was great tennis out there. We battled."

ARLINGTON, Va., April 25, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) issued the following statement in response to a vote in the United States Senate related to the Marketplace Fairness Act, legislation aimed at giving states the power if they so choose - to better enforce their sales tax laws and to level the playing field for Main Street merchants.

The Senate voted to invoke cloture on the managers' amendment to the bill, which is sponsored by Senators Mike Enzi (R-WY) Richard Durbin (D-IL), Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND). The vote foreshadows final passage of the Marketplace Fairness Act.

"Today's vote in the Senate is proof that the special treatment of big online businesses at the expense of retailers on Main Street will soon be a thing of the past," said Bill Hughes, senior vice president for government affairs. "The overwhelmingly bipartisan support for leveling the playing field is rare in today's political environment and paves the way for a level playing field once and for all."

"For too long the Main Street retailers that are an integral part of their communities have faced tax rules that put them at a disadvantage to their out of state, online-only competitors. The Marketplace Fairness Act would simply provide states with the power, if they choose to use it, to ensure that the market, not government, determines winners and losers," said Hughes. "We applaud the Senate for its support, thank the sponsors for their steadfast commitment to fairness, and look forward to final passage and working with the House to level the playing field for all merchants this year."

The Marketplace Fairness Act was outlined in RILA's 2013 public policy agenda as one of the top priorities for the industry:

Identical legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced by Representatives Steve Womack (R-AR) and Jackie Speier (D-CA) has generated strong bipartisan support.

RILA is the trade association of the world's largest and most innovative retail companies. RILA members include more than 200 retailers, product manufacturers, and service suppliers, which together account for more than $1.5 trillion in annual sales, millions of American jobs and more than 100,000 stores, manufacturing facilities and distribution centers domestically and abroad.

SOURCE Retail Industry Leaders Association

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There aren't many charitable ways to interpret the New York City mayor's comments, made on a radio show on WOR today, as . He took issue with the idea of legalizing marijuana for three reasons.

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The Post:

"There's no medical. This is one of the great hoaxes of all time."

Saying something is one of the great hoaxes of all time is, in itself, a bold claim. We are a civilization that has yielded afrom the Loch Ness Monster to Bernie Madoff. If it were the case that marijuana held no medical benefit, it would perhaps be a hoax, but of questionable scale.

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And it would involve the complicity ofandand , all of whom suggest that there's validity to the idea of marijuana having a medicinal use.

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A Bloomberg staffer "clarified" to the Post reporter that the mayor meant that recreational users might acquire pot reserved for medical purposes. Which is a weird definition of "hoax," but we'll go with it.

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Bloomberg then said this: "The bottom line is, I'm told marijuana is much stronger today than it was 20, 30 years ago. … That's one problem."

It's not exactly clear how that's a problem? This isn't like alcohol, in which there's a demonstrable downside to drinking too much. Yes, a big glass of beer will have a very different effect than a big glass of Everclear. But that is not demonstrably the case with pot. Perhaps Bloomberg is worried stoned people might eat .

Bloomberg's third argument was perhaps the weirdest.

This is not exactly how drug dealing, particularly of marijuana, works. There are a lot of drugs with much higher profit margins than marijuana. It may very well be the case the marijuana dealers will explore other high-profit criminal activity in lieu of selling weed if it is legalized, but those dealers could be selling "something worse" right now if they really wanted to. A lot of weed dealers, I am told from reliable sources who are not me, do so casually. Many of them aren't trying to feed their families. They're trying to offset the cost of smoking weed.

Bloomberg's comments, head-slappingly goofy as they were, are a little less funny when one considers that he is the mayor of city that relishes busting people for marijuana possession. Just yesterday,how, with Bloomberg's blessing, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has turned the pot bust into something of an art form.

The problem grew particularly bad in conjunction with the NYPD's enthusiasm for stop-and-frisks, random searches of pedestrians — nearly all of them— that Bloomberg credits with reducing the city's crime rate. But the data suggests that arrests for misdemeanor drug crimes increased in tandem with the number of stop-and-frisks. This is part of the reasonin the first place: To curtail arrests from the Bloomberg NYPD's still-enthusiastic stop-and-frisk program.

A final note, just as a bit of a garnish on the ridiculousness of Bloomberg's comments. When , the not-yet-mayor admitted that he used to smoke weed, saying, "You bet I did. And I enjoyed it." Presumably only because it wasn't very strong and it kept his dealer's kids fed. And almost certainly he would now agree that he should have been arrested for possessing it.

The Dow Jones industrial average was up 40 points at 15,364 shortly before midday Friday, a gain of 0.3 percent. IBM led the Dow higher. The index is up 3.5 percent in May and 17 percent so far this year.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index was up a point at 1,655, or 0.1 percent. The Nasdaq composite was up five points at 3,497, or 0.2 percent.

All three indexes were slightly lower in early trading.

Lions Gate Entertainment rose 8 percent to $30.97. The company's income and revenue beat Wall Street's forecasts as the company benefited from home video sales of the finale to its hit franchise "Twilight."

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David Rensin , which she essentially decided to turn on its head: 

Playboy: If you woke up tomorrow in the body of a Victoria’s Secret model, what would you do for the rest of the day?

Dunham: I’d be really disoriented and wonder what had happened in the night. Which enemy had dragged me to the doctor? I don’t think I’d like it very much. There would be all kinds of weird challenges to deal with that I don’t have to deal with now. I don’t want to go through life wondering if people are talking to me because I have a big rack. Not being the babest person in the world creates a nice barrier. The people who talk to you are the people who are interested in you. It must be a big burden in some ways to look that way and be in public. That said, I probably would want to see if I could get free food at restaurants. Then I’d call a doctor and see if she could return me to my former situation.

Dunham has talked about appearing in Playboy before. In a  with fellow indie darling Greta Gerwig for Paper, she said: "...I want to be in Playboy. You get photographed covered in oil and dirt. I would wear underwear but I'd take my top off. I just don't want to show my genitals. It's the same thing: you'd never expect 'this guy' in Playboy." At the time she tweeted: 

Dept. of things I knew not to say even while saying them: RT @ Lena Dunham ready to go topless for Playboy

Perhaps fulfilling some sort of fantasy (or making some sort of commentary),for her real-life stint in the magazine she posed with a t-shirt usually handed to women who attend Playmate castings. 

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Playboy/Autumn de Wilde

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As for the rest of the Playboy interview, there are a number of standard "Lena Dunham Questions" about weird sex, millennials, diversity, and Brooklyn. (She tells Rensin that she wants people to stop asking: "Why are you naked on TV so much?") But when asked about whom she would "dream of directing in a nude scene" she comes up with the fairly disturbing combination of David Strathairn and Rooney Mara. Thanks for that image, Lena.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - At first blush the two leading U.S. stock exchanges won a sweeping victory this week in a long-running legal battle over market data - the stock quotes, share prices and other trading information that are highly prized in the electronic marketplace.

But a ruling by the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit may also have opened the door for the Internet companies, brokers and others in the case to achieve a decade-old goal of cutting the fees the exchanges charge for the data.

The court ruled in a decision earlier this week it had no jurisdiction over a case brought by the NetCoalition of some 20 Internet companies, including Google Inc and Yahoo Inc, and the Securities Industry and Finance Markets Association, a 600-member lobby for brokers, bankers and asset managers.

The decision appeared to slam the door on the petitioners and remove a potential obstacle to efforts by the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Stock Market to offset sharp drops in revenue from stock transactions by boosting market data sales.

But the court did offer a path for Sifma and the NetCoalition group to mount a new battle, several people close to the case said.

The court indicated the Securities Exchange Act, which governs exchanges and their responsibilities as self-regulatory organizations, requires that the exchanges provide for the "equitable allocation" of reasonable fees, among other dues and charges.

The petitioners have argued the exchanges are effectively monopolies and competition is not sufficient to restrain prices.

"I intend to submit a ... petition," said Roger Blanc, a lawyer with Willkie Farr who represented the NetCoalition, the name by which the case is also called. "As soon as we can put it together, we'll be back before the circuit court."

The case is notable because of the importance of market data in an electronic market that relies on "signal processing," the analysis of data by high-speed computers, to trade.

Sifma and the NetCoalition had sought judicial review of the proprietary data both NYSE and Nasdaq sell after the Securities and Exchange Commission let stand almost all their filings for new schedules and higher prices for market data in recent years.

The petitioners challenged the SEC over more than a dozen filings, saying the fees were exorbitant and regulators had abdicated their duties to ensure data fees were "fee and reasonable," a loosely defined standard the agency must uphold.

Four of the complaints were combined before the appeals court, which has oversight of the SEC, and the two exchanges with the regulators provided a joint opinion in the case.

Market data has been a thorn in the side of the SEC for years, with regulators unable to resolve the issue despite a series of high-profile hearings and studies from 1999 to 2005.

A former senior SEC official said market data is highly contentious with no easy answer.

Although the appeals court said the Dodd-Frank act stripped it of jurisdiction in the case, the court left intact its August 2010 ruling that there must be evidence that competition is constraining the fees the exchanges charge for the data.

The court also said the exchanges cannot enforce fee rules that are inconsistent with the exchange act, and said fees need to be tied to "some type of cost-based" standard to guard against excessive profits.

The latter point could be a boon for the petitioners' cause. They have long contended the cost of producing the data is negligible and the exchanges charge far in excess of its cost.

"We are pleased that the court has affirmed our ability to provide high-quality data at reasonable rates to vendors who profit from reselling the data to their customers," a spokesman for the Nasdaq said. The NYSE declined to comment.

The NYSE and Nasdaq presented academic studies to bolster their position that competition exists for market data, and they have strongly resisted any cost analysis of their data.

The Nasdaq's chief financial officer has been telling analysts that market data is an "extremely high-margin" business. Revenue from the U.S. sale of proprietary data at the Nasdaq has expanded at a compound annual growth rate of about 10.8 percent since 2007, a period in which data usage has exploded.

The emphasis on market data as a profit center is misplaced, according to former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt. The exchanges are trying to staunch their hemorrhaging and charging for data is purely a short-term solution to a long-term problem, he said.

A good portion of market data is public and should not be proprietary as the exchanges see it, Pitt said in an interview before the court's ruling this week. Allowing data to be available only for those who can afford it will create hard-to-justify market dislocations, he warned.

"The question is when you've allowed people to treat market data as proprietary for so long, how do you justify making a shift and what accommodations do you make?" Pitt said.

The case is NetCoalition and Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association v Securities and Exchange Commission, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit; No. 10-1421.

(Reporting by Herbert Lash; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

In a surprise move, P&G said Thursday that former CEO A.G. Lafley, a 33-year industry veteran, is returning to the Cincinnati company's helm.

Lafley, 65, replaces CEO Bob McDonald, effective immediately. McDonald, who will retire June 30 after a transition period, has served as CEO since 2009.

Lafley, who led P&G from 2000 to 2009, also is taking the president and chairman titles.

The 175-year-old company's Tide detergent, Crest toothpaste and other products can be found in 98 percent of American households. But it is struggling to grow under increased competition and global economic challenges.

In his first stint at the helm, Lafley helped right an ailing P&G, emphasizing innovation and a "consumer-is-boss" focus. That included spending more time in personal observation and interviews with consumers.

He also pulled off the blockbuster $57 million acquisition of the Gillette Co. in 2005, expanding P&G's reach into male-oriented products with Gillette's shavers and razors. Industry watchers say the company is looking for Lafley to work his magic once again.

"A.G.'s track record and his depth of experience at P&G make him uniquely qualified to lead the company forward at this important time," said board director Jim McNerney in a statement.

P&G is known for its premium products that cost more than competitors but are perceived by customers to be of higher quality. But growth for the company has slowed in developed markets like North America and Europe.

Like many of its rivals, P&G has been expanding into rapidly growing emerging markets such as Latin America, India and Russia. But there, it has faced tough competition from already entrenched smaller rivals such as Dutch consumer-product maker Unilever and Colgate-Palmolive.

In order to spur growth, P&G has been cutting costs and rolling out new products. The company is in the middle of a belt-tightening plan aimed at saving $10 billion by 2016. And it has introduced new products or brand expansions including Tide Pods single-use laundry pellets, Downy Unstopables, a washer sheet that adds scent to clothes, and a stronger version of Secret deodorant called Clinical Strength.

But investors have continued to be frustrated by the company's slow revenue growth and stagnant market share gains globally. The pressure stepped up last July, when activist investor William Ackman took a 1 percent stake. He has been vocal about the company's need to streamline operations and improve results.

"It sounds like the board needed a change at the top," said Bernstein analyst Ali Dibadj. "We thought maybe there would be a little bit more of a test runway for current management, but clearly, frustration was very high."

P&G last year acknowledged that it had made missteps in some emerging markets which make up nearly 40 percent of its sales when it expanded in some product areas too quickly. And it introduced a plan to focus on its 20 biggest new products and its 10 most-profitable emerging markets, which has led to improving market share.

The moves seemed to be working.

In P&G's most recent January-to-March quarter, net income rose 6 percent to $2.57 billion, as revenue inched up 2 percent to $20.6 billion. But that fell slightly short of analysts' expectations of $20.72 billion. It had also begun to gain market share in North America. But fourth-quarter guidance was below expectations as the company spent more to market new products.

Lafley said the board approached him "very recently" after McDonald decided to retire and asked him to reclaim the top spot.

"Frankly, duty called," he said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I'm back, I'm full on."

His first order of business, he said, will be to stay on the strategic course that the company has been implementing, focusing on core developed markets as well as developing markets, introducing new products and cutting costs.

"I spent nearly 33 years at this company, and the company has got some momentum right now," he said.

The board thanked McDonald, who joined the company in 1980, for his service.

"Under his leadership, the company expanded its business in developing markets, built a strong innovation pipeline, and has made substantial progress implementing a $10 billion cost savings and productivity program," McNerney said. McDonald could not immediately be reached.

P&G's shares rose 54 cents to $79.24 in aftermarket trading.

Evidence from these ancient periods suggests humans produced new tools, and used symbolism in wall engravings. The findings suggest a tight link between abrupt climate changes and the emergence of modern human traits, researchers say.

"We provide for the first time really good evidence that the occurrence and disappearance of these first finds of human innovation are linked to climate change," said study author Martin Ziegler, an earth science researcher at Cardiff University in Wales.

Before these periods of innovation, , with the most impressive technology being hand axes, Ziegler said. But during these wet periods, more advanced stone and bone tools appear in the fossil record, as well as painted symbols on cave walls that suggest the development of language.

Archaeologists have also found some of the first evidence of constructed plant beds during these periods, and shells thought to be worn as adornments or jewelry, Ziegler said. Among the most important periods analyzed in the study date to 71,000, and a period between 64,000 and 59,000 years ago. []

In the study, Ziegler's team reconstructed South Africa's climate over the last 100,000 years. They pieced together the record by analyzing sediment cores taken from the offshore region near the southeastern tip of Africa.

Chemicals within the sediment suggest how much rainfall fell nearby, Ziegler said, as well as other indicators of climate.

The climate reconstruction agrees with records from elsewhere in the world. During these lush periods in South Africa, much of the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa was experiencing a drought, while much of the Northern Hemisphere was very cold, Ziegler said. The study suggests that cold conditions in the north reoriented Atlantic Ocean currents, shifting the global monsoon belt with its torrential rains to the south, he said.

The study shows an association, but not a cause-and-effect relationship between wetter conditions and human innovation. But it may be that during these periods, drought farther north forcedinto South African refuges, leading to a "bottleneck" of competition, and cross-cultural fertilization, Ziegler said.

Future work may look at the connection between human populations elsewhere, and local climate shifts.

But insights from these locations in South Africa are vital, because they are thought to "re?ect the emergence of modern behaviors of innovation, language and cultural identity," the authors wrote in the study, published today (May 21) in the journal Nature Communications.

Emailor follow him onor. Follow us , or. Article originally on LiveScience.com.

Or at least that's what a team of researchers did in the summer of 2010. The scientists drove across the southern United States and measured levels of methane in the atmosphere along the many roads and highways upon which they traveled.

In many areas, they found higher concentrations of methane than had previously been measured. That's a cause for concern because, among other reasons, methane traps more heat than carbon dioxide, making it a more potent greenhouse gas and thus of concern for , according to a study detailing the trips findings and published recently in the journal Atmospheric Environment. (Although methane may be a more potent heat-trapper, carbon dioxide is still the main greenhouse gas of concern because there is much more of it in the atmosphere.)

The team attached a long hose to the front of their RV so their own exhaust fumes wouldnt contaminate the results. The gas chromatograph onboard then measured the levels of methane along the drive.

"We tried to pass through urban areas during nighttime hours, to avoid being stuck in traffic and sampling mostly exhaust fumes," said Ira Leifer, study co-author and researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in a statement from the university. "Someone was always monitoring the chromatograph, and when we would see a strong signal, we would look to see what potential sources were in the area and modify the survey to investigate and, if possible, circumnavigate potential sources."

The researchers traversed cities, swamps and rural areas. They found the highest levels of methane in areas with refineries. As they crossed the Southwest and approached Houston, gas levels gradually increased, the news release noted.

They compared their notes with those from researchers at Germany's University of Bremen, who took measurements using the European Space Agency's Envisat satellite that could also measure methane concentrations over broad areas on the ground. The satellite readings matched their on-the-ground measurements.

Previous studies focused on "large-scale airborne data, which were challenging to separate from local sources," the UC Santa Barbara statement said. The combination of on-the-ground and aerial measurements used in this study helped determine the identity of the methane sources.

The findings could have implications for dealing with global warming."Methane is the strongest human greenhouse gas on a political or short timescale, and also has more bang for the buck in terms of addressing ," said Leifer. "This research supports other recent findings suggesting that fugitive emissions from fossil-fuel industrial activity actually are the largest methane source. This clearly indicates a need for efforts to focus on reducing these methane emissions."

Emailor follow him onor. Follow us , or . Article originally on LiveScience.com.